A PAL SNES is capable of outputting a pretty decent RGB picture. Unfortunately, most places advertise the RGB Scart lead for sale as being compatible with SNES/N64 and Gamecube. Most of the time, these leads do not work with a PAL SNES, you may see a beautiful sharp and crisp picture for a second, then it fades to black, or you may not see any picture at-all!
If you’ve got a soldering iron and know how to use it, then this is very easy to fix. To sum it up, you need to take apart the Scart plug and remove the 3 capacitors, making sure you solder the wires back to the correct pins (Red is Scart pin 15, Green is pin 11, Blue is pin 7).
If you need a bit more re-assurance, then read on…
Unscrew the Scart plug, and lever it open. Look for 3 little cylinders (usually black, maybe blue) each with 2 legs, 1 leg attached to pins 7/11/15, with wires coming of the other leg. Some cables (like the one picture below, bought from Play-Asia) actually use Red, Green and Blue wiring for the RGB signal, not all do though, so don’t assume that yours does.
Now, do this for each capacitor of the RGB signal separately, and you shouldn’t get them muddled up. Using a fine tipped, low wattage soldering iron, heat up the solder that holds the capacitor leg to the Scart pin, pull out the capacitor. Now heat up the solder holding the wire to the other leg and pull the capacitor free from the wire. And now?….. hold the wire onto the Scart pin where the capacitor was previously attached, heat up the solder so that it all melts back together. Repeat for the other 2 capacitors.
This was performed on a 3rd party cable, you could buy an official PAL Gamecube RGB lead, and modify that, unscrewing the Scart plug is a little harder as you have to squeeze some bits in and unscrew it at the same time. The capacitors are on a circuit board, you could remove them and replace with a bit of wire, or just join the 2 legs together using a blob of solder – like these three on the right of this photo.
Credit goes to Yod@ over at Rllmuk, who told me what to do when I bought a PAL SNES RGB cable that didn’t work.
Resistors!
Some people say that the RGB is a bit bright with the just the caps removed, if you find this then you could try fitting 47 or 75 Ohm resistors in place of the caps, I read this on Bordersdown but I don’t have a PAL SNES at the moment so haven’t tried this out. I have since seen an official PAL SNES RGB Cable, and can confirm it has a resistor array in it, so fitting a resistors probably is a good idea if Nintendo intended it.
I use Tim’s site for the correct info on wiring up any game consoles RGB Scart Lead now, it’s the best I’ve seen for this info.
If you prefer to buy a cable that you know is going to work, try Retro Gaming Cables – use the code MMMONKEY for 10% off!
